


Musketeers Gothic

by RobinLorin



Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Gen, Gothic, Metafiction, Season/Series 02
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-19
Updated: 2016-05-19
Packaged: 2018-06-09 10:22:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6902011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RobinLorin/pseuds/RobinLorin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Something is stopping him from speaking. He moves about his duties and shoots enemies with his regular skill, all the while feeling his heart chattering away in his chest, telling truths his tongue is forbidden to speak: the rabbit-beat of panic; the frantic drum of fear.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Musketeers Gothic

**Author's Note:**

> This is a bitter thing that I typed up at the end of S2, addressed only a few of the things that were horrible (Marguerite's death and Aramis' absolution; Porthos' storyline being chopped; d'Artagnan never properly apologizing to Constance about calling her a coward). 
> 
> I'm still bitter and I won't stop talking about it. (That is a [tumblr](http://hippity-hoppity-brigade.tumblr.com/tagged/yes-i%27m-bitter-no-i%27m-not-going-to-stop) tag, btw.) So I thought I'd toss this up on here.

They saddle their horses for a week’s long ride; bring enough coin to supply themselves for another week near the border. 

They find themselves in Spain hours later, galloping unheeded through the underbrush that covers the border. No one stops them. There is no soul in sight; no one to tell them how they made it to Spain so quickly. No memory in their heads of how they came to be here. 

They don’t mention it to each other; only dwell on it briefly in the corners of their doubtful minds; and then, with no confirmation from the others of their apparent memory loss, dismiss it as unimportant. Trips tend to blur together. They have jobs to do. 

 

D’Artagnan sits on the garrison stairs after Constance has gone, his own voice ringing in his ears. Never known you for a coward -- a coward --

“I should apologize to her,” he says fiercely, before Athos can say it, before he can sit next to d’Artagnan and offer warranted judgment. “It was unconscionable --” 

He trails off, the argument already fading into a dark blur in the back of his mind, a swarm of angry shouts. “I should apologize,” he repeats, softer, and takes the jug of wine when Athos offers it. 

There is so much going on -- the general, and his mysterious connection to Porthos -- and a new plot to kill the king, it seems, each week; and Constance is so beautiful and hurt and -- 

\-- and he knows there’s something he should be doing, when he meets with her in taverns and sees her in court. He wants to convince her to leave her husband, and to follow d’Artagnan to bed, and to take care of Rochefort’s plotting. It all rolls up into the ball of worry in the back of his mind, but there’s something else… something he keeps reaching for. Something he can never find time to articulate before Constance has turned away and his moment is lost. 

He almost reaches it in the danger and panic of the hostage situation in the planetarium, adrenaline clearing his mind. 

“You’re the bravest woman I know,” he tells her, and the lightening of her face is enough to let the worry slip completely from his mind. 

 

“What’s your name?” says the general, and Porthos gives it; but he looks narrowly at the fear and guilt on le Foix’s face, and he knows that secrets are being kept from him. 

He tries to ask le Foix, but the words grow thick and stopper his throat, closing his lungs until he coughs the question out and takes breaths and is silent. The world continues without him and suddenly Porthos is only background noise. 

Le Foix doesn’t look at him again. 

 

“I will tell him,” le Foix warns -- threatens -- Treville; and Treville waits for weeks in spine-crackling terror for a letter to arrive; a summons for Porthos, or explanation, or orders for Treville to tell all. 

Weeks pass, and no word comes. Le Foix may be dead for all Treville knows. Porthos doesn’t confront Treville about it. 

It seems everyone has forgotten the issue. 

And Treville, too, forgets. 

 

Porthos takes an arrow to the knee.

A month later Porthos jumps from a height and lands, and flinches, expecting pain. There’s none. He doesn’t know, a second later, why he’d anticipated any. His leg is fine.

He pulls his shoulder out of joint and minutes later punches a man so hard the masked man lifts off his feet before falling into a crumpled pile. Porthos shakes out his hand and grins and never wonders about the inconsistency of his wounds. 

 

The scene is familiar -- half-opened shirt, just-laced breeches, a woman in her nightgown with her hair loose. 

Aramis doesn’t know why he’s here --

Not with the callous inattention of a careless paramor -- he knows how he got here, secret rendezvous more than familiar to him: fumbling with clothes, flesh straining against flesh, sweat-slicked skin and shouts barely held to whispers. 

\-- but with a slow-burning fear that creeps up the back of his neck and stabs his gut. A sense that says I don’t know who this woman is; I don’t know what I am, to seduce her so; that wonders at his absence from the garrison that no one has commented on, that wonders at the Dauphin in the next room and the lengths he would seemingly go to hunt down the things kept from him. 

“I love you,” Marguerite says. Their eyes meet in a fraught half-second. Neither of them know why she said so. Her panic mounts as she waits for him to return the sentiment, to prove theirs is a whirlwind love and she isn’t losing her mind. 

“Marguerite,” he says gently, thinking My God help me, and she sees her own uncertainty in his face and she covers her face with her hands. 

 

The words halt and wither in Porthos’ throat for months before the letter arrives. He tries to confront Treville, succeeding only in staring as others around him move and chatter. 

The letter releases the strange hold on his tongue, and his unhurt body moves swiftly up the stairs to Treville’s office, and Porthos can finally say “The general -- you knew my father.” The points he’s stewed over for weeks come out in a torrent, with no leaps of logic; an impending sense of the forced silence moves him to hasty speech. 

Treville denies it. 

When Porthos goes to defend his point, he finds his arguments draining away, leaving him glaring and mute. 

Porthos tries again, every day, and only sometimes is he able -- allowed -- to speak. The arguments end with Porthos pressing none of his great bulk against Treville’s throat; none of his explanations of This truth belongs to me and you have no right to take it; You were never a child in the Court of Miracles, watching your mother fade away and wondering where you father was passing his lips. The arguments end with Porthos, choked and stewing in his anger, watching Treville walk away. 

He feels the anger and frustration in the core of his being, but when he faces Treville the words drain away, like blood from a wound, and Porthos, who has never been short on words in his life, feels the silence crushing his throat in a vice. 

He moves about his duties and shoots enemies with his regular skill, all the while feeling his heart chattering away in his chest, telling truths his tongue is forbidden to speak: the rabbit-beat of panic; the frantic drum of fear. He breathes through it. 

Even in the Court, Porthos had been able to speak as he pleased; even if it had gotten him soundly beaten. He’d had the choice. Now, he has nothing but a careful delusion. 

He breathes and cleans his gun and practices arguments in his head. 

 

Marguerite is quieter at court than she ever has been in her life. 

Her family would not recognize her now if they saw her -- wild, laughing, witty Marguerite, pale as a ghost, drifting down palace hallways, staring out of windows in rooms empty but for herself and an infant. 

There is something about the court -- something about the people that muffles Marguerite’s voice. She finds she cannot speak of herself unless someone asks her first; she finds she cannot offer teasing riposte even when her conversational partner lightly jabs her. 

Marguerite feels like she is bleeding all over from so many gentle wounds. 

There is something about the court… 

Somehow, she never thinks of leaving. 

She flattens, somehow. She becomes paler, and gaunt. She sleeps during the day, over the dauphin’s crib; she forgets how to speak; she lets herself become lost in Aramis, without trying to untangle the buried threads of her memory (how did they start upon this affair? why does she meet him when there is nothing to attract her -- no conversation, no sharing of her thoughts, no exchange of intellect?). 

No one asks Marguerite about her family. No one offers her conversation. 

She trembles before Rochefort, unable to battle his quick temper and cunning thoughts when she has already been beaten into a malleable mold for him to work his evils upon. She remembers her father when Rochefort mentions him, and begs for mercy for his sake; but even that falls away and she is left with nothing: a puppet on strings, a ghost at the mercy of her summoner. 

There is something… 

 

“What about Aramis?” d’Artagnan says when they’re readying for a mission and their fourth hasn’t shown yet. 

Porthos frowns. “He hasn’t been around much lately.” 

The thought niggles at a corner of his mind, jockeying other thoughts into place, other hints and clues and secret tells that Aramis has never been able to keep from him. They line up in a blazing row of truths, each unfolding and creating a picture he barely wants to see, let alone understand -- 

Aramis hasn’t been around much. 

Porthos shrugs. “He’ll be here,” he says. 

 

Rochefort parries, clumsily, and tried to talk his way out of the fight. “What about the cardinal’s mistress?” he spits. 

Aramis feels the fear-thrill jolt in his belly whenever he thinks of Adele -- it’s familiar, but the last time he’d felt it was months ago. The last time he’d thought of Adele was months ago. She means the world to him. He remembers her silky hair and her gentle, mocking laugh and her fingers around his pistol once when she convinced him to teach her how to shoot

“What about your mistress, Marguerite?” Rochefort adds, and whatever memory or thought Aramis was lost in is already falling away. 

Marguerite -- she means something too. Aramis is convinced of this, but it’s like a party smile, a hollow laugh, a constructed memory. Golden hair and a white nightdress and a tingling of fear on the back of his neck 

Rochefort is already talking again, and Aramis returns to the fight -- he has always felt alive in battle, and this is no less true now. Everything else falls away.


End file.
